Kukla's Korner Hockey

Three consecutive defeats do not equate a crisis, even if it’s for the first time all year, even if it’s in March, even if the division and conference leads have been sliced to four points with four weeks to go.

The Rangers haven’t turned inept, old or slow in the blink of an eye, but they sure do appear vulnerable, ragged and in need of fresh blood now that they have reached the top of a stretch run that features only one break of as many as two days incorporated into the remaining 15-game schedule, and with one of those a travel day.

The question isn’t about the Rangers’ confidence or identity, it’s about the club’s ability to move the puck out of its own end with a breakout efficient enough to generate a combination of the rush game off which the Marian Gaborik-Derek Stepan-Artem Anisimov unit thrived and the down-low grinding forecheck off which the other forward units lived and breathed.